In all societies, male and female roles are regarded differently. The mother role is universally carried out by women, which is biologically based. Roles defined by sex also characterize the economic sphere so that the tasks men perform are different from those women perform. This difference is not any outgrowth of the biological differences between men and women. A specific task may be associated with men in one society and with women in another. Milking herd animals, for example, may be women’s task in some societies and a man’s task in others.
Males and females are each associated with different kinds of behavior. These concepts of male and female behavior extended to how people walk, sit, talk and dress. In our society, as in all others, men walk and talk in certain ways and until recently dressed very differently from women. In some societies, different spatial areas are associated with males and females. Women in many Middle Eastern societies are restricted to certain parts of the house and may only come into contact with the males who are members of their family. In such societies, the coffee house and the market are defined as male domains. In contrast, in some West African societies, women most often appear in the marketplace. Sometimes, men choose to carry out female rather than male roles. In some cases, some men dress like women and perform female tasks. On the other hand, females who carry out male roles usually dress and act like men. Because of women’s association with mothering and the home, women are associated with the domestic affairs and men are associated with the public affairs. In a number of New Guinea societies, men are associated with the men’s house in which they eat and sleep while women are associated with their own dwelling houses. In our own and other Western societies this division was true until the beginning of the 20th century. Politics, the courts, businesses, banks, and so forth were male areas, and so too were the social clubs where real business was carried out. At the beginning of the 20th century, women began to question the assignment of the male and female role. They formed social groups and began to demand the right to vote. They began to move into the business and professional worlds as well. Men regarded the women pioneers in this movement as very manlike. Even today women in business, law or banking wear very tailored, conservative suits to work. As these changes occur in female roles in contemporary American society, men are increasingly taking on child care and domestic tasks.
